"Bark like a dog..."
Posted on 09/06/2006 10:58:00 AM PDT by DaveTesla
Anderson Cooper's CIA Secret
Anderson Cooper has long traded on his biography, carving a niche for himself as the most human of news anchors. But there's one aspect of his past that the silver-haired CNN star has never made public: the months he spent training for a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Following his sophomore and junior years at Yale—a well-known recruiting ground for the CIA—Cooper spent his summers interning at the agency's monolithic headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in a program for students interested in intelligence work. His involvement with the agency ended there, and he chose not to pursue a job with the agency after graduation, according to a CNN spokeswoman, who confirmed details of Cooper's CIA involvement to Radar.
"Whatever summer jobs or internships our anchors had in college couldn't be less consequential," she added. He has kept the experience a secret, sources say, out of concern that, if widely known, it might compromise his ability to travel in foreign countries and even possibly put him at greater risk from terrorists.
"He doesn't want to be any more of a target than he already is," says one Anderson confidante. On the other hand, as Bob Woodruff and others have learned, American journalists are already prime targets in the world's conflict zones, and are typically accused of having CIA ties even where none exist. And by not disclosing his training before now, Cooper has arguably made it into a potential issue. "It creates the appearance of something smelly there," says a former CNN official who knows Cooper. (Particularly in light of the period Anderson spent studying Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi after college. Soon after, Cooper apparently gave up his Bond fantasy to pursue a career in journalism—except for a brief period when he starred as host of ABC's reality show, The Mole.)
According to the spokeswoman, Cooper told his bosses at CNN about his time with the agency. But even if he hadn't, says Walter Isaacson, who headed the network from 2001 to 2003 and is now president of the Aspen Institute, it's not the sort of thing that would automatically require disclosure, since the stint was brief and far in the past. "I think what he did was probably fine and cool, and I've got no problems with it," he added.
Glad I'm not sick."
In other news, Anderson Cooper's mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, once loaned her famous name to a line of blue jeans that made my ex-girlfriend's butt look fat.
No red flag there, nosiree!
This is serious. Anderson Cooper has been outed.
Anderson Cooper is NOT stupid.
Yeah, terrific. The guy has a privileged, but difficult childhood, grows up to find something he wants to do and is probably good at, and folks stand in line to screw it up for him...terrific.
Check out the cover of the latest issue of Menswear Magazine.
Looks to me as though he was trying to infiltrate the CIA, but ultimately decided he could do more damage to his country by working at CNN...
I've seen him on TV, and he's definitely stupid. And ptobably gay.
Yes, well qualified...HA
which is a big part of the problem there.
Cooper graduated from college the same year I did. The CIA was one of the jobs posted on my college's co-op job list. Every single employer that I saw except one had a 3.0 GPA as a requirement. The only one which only required a 2.5 GPA was the CIA. Hmmm, that made me wonder exactly what quality of summer employees the CIA got.
The same fetid pool of candidates that DOS recruits from--worked with them all. Underwhelmed by the quality in every instance.
I remember Anderson Cooper from my High School days when he was on the Channel One student news program.
No...her a$$ made her butt look fat.
The words that must never be uttered, even in jest.
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